26 beds at Manitoba nursing home closed for months because of government delays fixing elevator

A personal care home in Winkler, Man., has been forced to close 26 desperately needed beds after its elevator became unstable, and petitioned the provincial government for months before Shared Health finally committed to fund the repair. 

Karin Oliveira, CEO of Salem Home, had to make the difficult decision last month to move 26 people off the facility's second floor after she lost confidence in the elevator that kept breaking down.

"The risk of it failing is big so we didn't want to risk of … all of a sudden it stops working and then they are stuck, literally stuck up there." she said.

Salem Home officials had known for years the elevator needed to be repaired, and put out a tender in March to get the work done. 

However, after they posted the tender Oliveira couldn't get a straight answer from Shared Health about whether it would fund the roughly $200,000 repair. The answer would give them the green light to move the patients, but no one was getting back to them.

"We were waiting to hear, can we do it [move the patients] or not," she said of her request to Shared Health.

"The board of directors just said, 'OK, well, let's just do it because we can't wait. The longer we wait, the harder it gets.' So we went ahead and moved the residents."

Oliveira has 54 people waiting to get into the 145-bed, non-profit home. The loss of these beds meant those people would be waiting even longer. 

About 20 of those people are waiting in hospital, taking up a bed that could be used for someone needing treatment for an emergency, she says. 

"For residents, waiting in a hospital is not good. We see that they decline," she said, "so that's very sad to see."

Once the residents were moved, the home continued to wait in vain for word about the funding.

Across Manitoba, hundreds of seniors are waiting for a nursing home bed in hospital or at home, and in southern Manitoba, where Salem Home is located, the wait is the longest.

Within the region, seniors are waiting an average of six months for a spot, according to Southern Health, the regional health authority. At Salem Home, the wait time has climbed to 15 months because of the bed closures.

The region represents more 226,000 residents who live in the southernmost area of the province in places such as Altona, Winkler, Steinbach and Emerson.